With brown eyes, biker mustaches, gravel-like voices and the construction of the NFL’s defensive side, Freddie Escobar has long cut down on the imposing figure as head of the city’s firefighters’ union in the Political Fire Fires in Los Angeles.
He was in my face at the 2022 Rick Caruso Campaign stop. More recently, Escobar blows up Mayor Karen Bass after the Palisade fire launched La Fire Station Chief Christine Crowley.
“Management and labor, together. We couldn’t stop,” the 55-year-old told me in an hour-long interview at Union headquarters in Westlake. “and [Crowley] It was used as a scapegoat. We’ve removed a big big champion for us. ”
Since 2018, Escobar, president of United Firefighters in the City of Los Angeles, has served his final two-year term before retiring. During his tenure, LA firefighters have overcome some tough times: Covid. Parisa des Inferno. There are fewer fire stations than in 1960, far lower than nearly 4 million people today. A scandal involving past union leaders.
“The members of the field are on track,” Escobar replied when he asked what the firefighters would be like.
He sat in an armchair, in thick glasses and a long-sleeved shirt that softened his appearance. Memorials from his 35-year firefighter career surround us: family photos. Helmet and hat. strap. Liquor bottle. Santa Claus dressed the firefighters. Numerous binders filled with reports.
“You’ll never hear them complain,” he said of his colleagues on the field – the complaints are left with him.
“What we do every day is not sustainable in this area. I don’t care how young you are,” Escobar was more tired than angry after a few seconds. “It’s a band-aid that’s been going on for years, and we need to fix it.”
Escobar has been everywhere since the Palisades fired. CNN is touring the devastation. On USA Today, LAFD claims it is “a terrible, dangerously understaffed.” He will appear at City Hall alongside Crawley in the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to bring her back.
“She was actually the first chief to receive our advice, and I said, ‘Hey, I’ll be with you all the way through to the end of this,” he said.
Freddie Escobar, United Firefighter from the Los Angeles City Office.
(Robert Gautier/Los Angeles Times)
Born in Ecuador to an Ecuadorian mother and a Colombian father, Escobar moved to Pico merger at the age of four, and moved to Lynwood, saying “the gang was coming.”
During his fourth grade at Roosevelt Elementary School, firefighters responded to the flames of his school. Soon after that, his class visited the fire station for career day.
“You’re just a child,” Escobar remembered. “You’re in awe. They’re your heroes. You know. “Oh, these guys are bigger than the guys upstairs.”
He joined Downey High’s Firefighting Explorers program and joined LAFD after his mission with the Marines. His first assignment: Station 11 of Pico Union. Escobar became a shop steward, but until the early 2000s, when drivers crashed into two idling fire engines, they didn’t think about becoming more involved in labor leadership.
“Chaps out there, we’re calling them,” he said. There was no blink as Escobar began to guide his inner Nury Martinez, a former city council president who resigned after a racist rambling got caught up in the record. “They love to drink day and night. They just drink a lot. They go behind the car and drive.
His casual insults on the key parts of the LA fabric were out of nowhere, and I just stared forward and continued on with him.
He told his colleagues he complained that his union members had not defended him adequately during the investigation into the crash, and he eventually revealed the misconduct.
My colleague encouraged him. “Six months later, it’s election time. “Hey, big mouth. I’m going here. Do you want to make a difference? I’ll make a difference.”
Escobar then took positions on the union’s 10-member executive committee. After years of experiencing what he described as “Crybaby Arena,” he took on the incumbent in the top spot and won because it was “about maintaining his normal self” rather than supporting ranks and files.
During the pandemic, the union made national news after city employees refused to approve their mission to get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs. Escobar got the Covid vaccine, but felt that he had to respect the wishes of his members who didn’t want a shot.
The fight “separated us a lot” politically, he said, but the rest of the hostility was largely dissipated after the ordeal of the Palisade’s battle against the fire. Escobar’s eyes sparkled when they issued a warning a month before the fire that “someone will die” should LAFD resources be cut further.
A Palisade fire that ignited on January 7th destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and killed 12 people after forecasters warned of catastrophic winds.
A Times investigation found that LAFD officials chose not to order around 1,000 firefighters to work for the second shift as the wind is building. Bass cited that he doesn’t work for these firefighters as one of her reasons for firing Crowley.
Escobar dismissed the Times findings as being too dependent on former LAFD employees who “have their own agenda.” He didn’t directly answer my question about whether Crawley thought she had done everything she could.
He instead argued that the Palisades disaster could have been better faced if the LAFD had not been so underfunded. He hopes to put bond measures on the fire department in the 2026 vote.
Freddie Escobar will speak at a February 2025 press conference after Mayor Karen Bass fired fire by Los Angeles Fire Chief Christine Crowley.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
He refused to speculate on why Crowley fired publicly criticising the mayor a few days after the Parisades fire began to shorten her division.
The two were once “thief thick,” he said. “The base had Crawley’s brush jacket and helmet and everything was on fire. They had their arms locked in, so they split a bit. Imagine you’re married.
He did not apologise for his militant public persona.
The conversation then turned to diversity within the LAFD.
Previously, Escobar admitted that he had benefited from a 1974 consent ruling requiring that half of the LAFD’s employment were from minority groups (the order ended in 2002).
Now he criticized the Fire Commission (the private committee that oversees the LAFD) for “wanting.”[ing] To have an unnamed academy in the name of reflecting the city’s demographics.
“There are a lot of people of color. [and] Escobar said, “We should represent the city of Los Angeles without lowering the standard. “Women in the fire service… We want to get all of them. But if you’re a woman and you want, you can go to Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, but still have a great career and don’t do the call road we do.”
He believes white and black firefighters are “overrated” at LAFD, “what does that mean?”
White people make up 28% of the LA population and 43% of urban firefighters, while blacks make up 9% of the population and 11% of the firefighters.
Only 7% of women have LAFD. Another big gap is Latinos. It is 47% of the population, but 31% of the LAFD.
“It’s not for everyone,” Escobar said before cracking, “They all want to be soccer players!”
Previously he said he had failed a tryout at the LA Galaxy. Because “I was not a professional soccer player. Just like the fire service. Fire service isn’t like that for everyone.”
I laughed at his joke, but reminded me of his own trajectory.
He replied that LAFD has a “good” recruitment program, but ultimately he said, “You have to love working with your hands…. The new generation is interesting. They all want to be famous on Instagram. They want to make a lot of money and wake up.”
Escobar was sometimes soft during our chats, confessing that he “breaks his heart” that he was no longer present for his wife and children. He believes he “failed” by not seeking more resources.
However, his evasive explanation of why there are no Latino firefighters in Los Angeles, coupled with his anti-Gatemala ideas, cast him as a kind of Angeleno I know well.
Escobar spoke to the crew at Station 26, where he spent nearly 20 years before heading the LA firefighters’ union in 2018.
(Robert Gautier/Los Angeles Times)
We eventually headed to one of Escobar’s old haunts: Station 26, at the motto “Anywhere, Anywhere”, where he appeared all the way to the captain.
Colonel Al Balestra of the station praised Escobar for still covering changes in the holiday shootout. Escobar will earn around four shifts per month, despite his job as union president being full-time.
“That’s something every membership wants to have as a union leader,” said the 18-year veteran. “People who have experience with boots on earth that maintain that connection with us.”
Escobar then checked in for a rookie training session at Rec Room. I asked the group what they thought about their union president.
Engineer Gordon Wilson raised his hand and the room quieted. He rattled all levels of bureaucrats, internals, fire commissions, city councils, mayors and more intersecting with LA firefighters. He pointed to Escobar.
“Here is this gentleman,” Wilson said loudly, “has the eerie ability to communicate with them.”
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